OT: How Amazing

[geoschmo]

Actually those technologies you mention are not as far away as you think.

We already have crude artifical ears. It's called a cochlear implant, and it's in wide use already. In fact one of the biggest detrements to them to this point is they work so well that many deaf people are resistant to it on philisophical reasons.

We may have artificial limbs that respond to thought commands and give tactile feedback to the sensory centers of the brain within the next decade or two. They already have labratory experiments with primates that have shown remarkable success.

Artifical eyes will probably take more then ten years. What they are already working on is a sensory device that you wear like clothing that gives feedback to the brain about objects around you. It's not the same thing as eyesight, but the brain uses it as visual clues. Some studies show we are very close to a practical device sensite enough to allow differention between different peoples faces. Actual artifical eyes that are implanted and give the same kind of information as biological ones are probably far off, but I would expect they will be much closer to decades then centruries